The curse of inheritance

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Those of you who have read this blog awhile probably know I’m inclined to think we’ve got to quit rewarding people for being born to wealthy, powerful parents. The practice has been around so long it’s almost impossible to force our minds to examine the issue. But when we are able to do it a lot of facets emerge that would argue to the unbiased observer it’s not the way to operate a society.

We all grew up on rags to riches stories and the generations before us had their Horatio Algers, Joseph Kennedys and other self-made millionaires. This country spawned thousands of them during the 19th and 20th Centuries.

But what we rarely consider is that the progeny of those millionaires and billionaires end up being the driving forces in the running of the country. An aristocracy based as thoroughly on inheritance as any European lords and nobles the people who founded this country did their best to assure would never rule here.

In the same way we know about self-made wealth and the men who have it, most of us also know about their offspring. The powerful insanity of the heirs to the DuPont fortune. Teddy Kennedy. Paris Hilton. And the list goes on and on. There’s no evidence at all that being born to conspicuous wealth lends itself to breeding better, more productive people. The opposite is more likely true.

So what, the next obvious question asks itself, should ‘we’ do with billionaire estates after it’s all been confiscated besides, say, a million dollars each to the heirs?

Well, how about this? Use it to finance those damned wars nobody has asked anyone but wealthy people whether they want?

Or use it to build that damned wall most sane people don’t want, but are being threatened with having to pay for.

Or sum it all up each year and divide it into equal parts as a sort of ‘tax refund’ for all the other citizens of the country who don’t have a million bucks?

And every one of these suggestions is certain to infuriate a huge piece of the public. The wealthy and powerful, of course. And those who think they might inherit sometime, somehow. And those who believe they’re clever enough to be a self-made millionaire and that this will keep them from creating a dynasty.

But the really strange ones are those down in the trailer parks, of out there in suburbia who toil for their survival and work hard for everything they get in this life. They are as protective of our power elite aristocracy as their masters who did inherit their fortunes.

There’s no understanding the human mind.

Old Jules